City Island (Review)
Monday, 4th April 2011, 20:46

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The general protocol when reviewing DVDs and BDs is that a title will become available, you request that title and hope that you receive it so you can watch the film and the extra features and then sit at a computer and write your review. Amongst the discs you have requested the are pushed through your letterbox are others that arrive unsolicited; some welcome, some not. City Island is one of these unsolicited DVDs as I didn't request it but was sufficiently intrigued that I didn't just leave it to one side, but watched it when I had the time and, as you can see, the review process started there.

This is one of those films where the title is also the main location, with the film set in the small fishing area of the Bronx known as City Island which, prior to watching this film, I was blissfully unaware. According to the opening voice-over, the people who live in City Island are separated into two categories: clam diggers and mussel suckers. Clam diggers are the people who have spent their whole life in the area whereas mussel suckers haven't. One of these clam diggers is Vince Rizze, a corrections officer, who lives in the house that his grandfather built with his extremely dysfunctional family.

Harbouring ambitions to be an actor, Vince goes to weekly acting classes, telling his wife, Joyce, that he is actually going to play poker with his mates. Of course, she doesn't believe him and assumes that he is having an affair but, as Vince is wracked with the shame of taking acting lessons, he is preoccupied with his own insecurities and is completely unaware of his wife's suspicions. This isn't Vince's only secret as he has told Joyce that he has given up smoking but smokes in the car to and from work and even stands on a stool in the bathroom with his head out of the skylight in order to have a sneaky fag. Unbeknownst to him, Joyce also smokes in secret, as does his son, Vinnie, Jr. and his daughter Vivian is only money as a stripper having been suspended from college and lost her scholarship.

When challenged by his acting tutor that next week's class will involve everyone unveiling their biggest and most embarrassing secret, Vince approaches one of the prisoners, Tony, and says that he can have early release from jail if he comes to live with Vince and his family. This isn't an entirely selfless act as, unbeknownst to Tony, Vince is his father from a shortlist relationship 24 years ago. This is when things begin to spiral out of control and everyone's secrets become intertwined. Not only is Vinnie, Jr. sneaking out onto the roof for the odd cigarette and smoking at school, but, bored with the mundane pornography that he browses on the Internet, has developed a fetish for big women, one of whom, Denise, lives across the street.

For reasons that I can't entirely comprehend, before Vince brings Tony back to his house, he not only neglects to tell the jailbird who his father is, but he also doesn't tell his family about the result of a brief relationship before he met his wife. This proves to be very awkward when Vivian takes notice of Tony's muscular upper body (thanks to a daily exercise regimen which he began in prison and continues on the outside) and Joyce, thinking she is trapped in a loveless marriage, begins to seriously consider having an affair with her son-in-law.

Meanwhile, inspired by his acting partner Molly, Vince agrees to go to his first audition, which turns out to be for a part in Martin Scorsese's new film and, channelling their way to Tony spoke to the other prisoners, impresses the casting director so much that he receives a call back. However, because this whole acting side project is an embarrassing secret, he doesn't dare tell anyone apart from Molly. Vince, Jr. is also 'living the dream' by agreeing to go shopping with Denise, which doesn't stop there as he also helps with cooking her food and spending most of his time at her house with Denise and her daughter, who is in the same school year as Vinnie.

City Island is very much an actor's film as Vince's acting coach, Michael, gives a lecture to his class about how much he hates pauses, blaming Marlon Brando (an actor who Vince is obsessed with) for ruining acting by pausing so much and there is a great deal of emphasis put on 'acting' when it comes to keeping secrets and pretending to be something very different when you are around the dinner table. When Vinnie, Jr. tells Vivian that her breasts appear to be growing, an observation reinforced by her father, rather than admit that she has had implants to help with her job as a stripper, she basically accuses them both of being perverts and storms to her bedroom where Joyce assume she will spend time doing her college work.

Writer-director Raymond De Felitta clearly knows what he's doing with the camera and everything is very well constructed, framed and composed but, as someone with nearly as many acting credits as directing credits, it seems as if he doesn't have the necessary distance between himself and the actors and likes to emphasise the performances. I'm not saying that every director needs to, in the words of Alfred Hitchcock, treat actors as cattle, but it occasionally doesn't help when you have an actor behind the camera, particularly when he wants to make a film about acting! Additionally, Andy Garcia has a producing credit and was in charge of some of the second unit shooting so the lead actor was doing work behind the camera.

I normally like offbeat indie films but found this one to be overwritten and unnecessarily complicated with the plot tying itself in knots for no other reason than to overcomplicate matters. Writing about every different character and their own secrets and relationships to one another was unnecessarily trying and I'm sure I have missed some things out. This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the film and there are several moments which are incredibly well worked with a great sense of dramatic tension and comedy, but I found other sections to be infuriatingly complicated with the characters not acting like real people but almost as caricatures in scenarios that you would more likely find in an improv session at an acting class. There is much to like about City Island, particularly the performances by Andy Garcia as Vince,, an almost unrecognisable Julianna Marguies as his wife, Steven Strait as Tony, Ezra Miller, who plays Vinnie, Jr and Dominik Garcia-Lorido (Andy Garcia's real-life daughter), who plays Vince's daughter Vivian. There are also very nice performances by Emily Mortimer and Alan Arkin as Vince’s acting partner, Molly, and acting coach, Michael, respectively.

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